


A Promise

by MapleCFreter



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Gen, I'm on my bullshit and that bullshit is angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, do not read if you do not like angst, this is a whitestone arc goes bad fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 10:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15193148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MapleCFreter/pseuds/MapleCFreter
Summary: Deep under Castle Whitestone, in a hidden passage which had once been the desperate escape route of two young nobles, Vax makes Percy a promise.Or: the Briarwood arc goes bad





	A Promise

Deep under Castle Whitestone, in a hidden passage which had once been the desperate escape route of two young nobles, Vox Machina slumbered. All aside from Vax’ildan, who sat silently with his back against the wall.

Pike’s spiritual guardian stood vigil over their sleeping forms, and Vax felt comfortable enough to allow his eyes to slide closed as he listened to their breathing. It was chaotic, so many different pitches and rhythms, too much breath mixing in an enclosed space. But to Vax there was no sweeter sound in the world. It meant that they were still alive, still kicking despite it all. He leaned back into the rough stone, and focused in on his sister’s breathing, let it calm him.

After many moments, his eyes reopened, and he looked down at Percy, where he lay curled against the wall. Vax had chosen his seat next to the other man quite deliberately. He watched Percy now with a mixture of worry and mistrust, searching for any sign that something was not right. Percival’s breaths were shallow and a little fast, but he looked like himself. Tired and a little dirty, but the same man he’d grown to know and care for over the last few years. Checking that no one else was awake, Vax gently roused him. There was a conversation that needed to be had.

Percy was groggy and unwilling to wake, as well as being as adamant as always that he had no information at all on the smoke that would occasionally pour from his orifices. For the hundredth time, Vax found himself wondering if Percy could really be this clueless. Still, ignorance was preferable to deception, he supposed.

Percy claimed he was taking back control, that the last time had felt less like losing himself. Vax wanted desperately to believe him.

“We are almost like family now,” Vax said, hating himself a little for the words that would come. “I have seen you do many great things, and you have earned my trust, but if you hurt my sister… If you hurt anyone else in this group inadvertently—”

“I would expect no less.”

“Well, all right then.”

“Is that a promise?” Percy asked, looking down at his powder stained fingers, not meeting Vax’s eyes in the darkness.

“What?”

“Do you promise not to let me hurt any of them?”

“I…” Vax was blindsided.

In retrospect, he wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. It was him who had started this conversation. He had no right to cave under the weight of those words. He wanted to argue, say it was unnecessary, that he knew Percy would never do such a thing, but Percy was looking at him, staring right through him.

“Of course, Percival. I promise.”

“I trust you too, Vax, like a brother. I trust you to call me on my shit when no one else will.”

“We’ll get through this,” Vax said, “together.”

“Vax!” Percy breathed, his mood switching suddenly to joy, blue eyes gleaming from behind his glasses. “I have a sister!”

Suddenly, Vax felt just a little bit better.

Despite the bodies packed so tightly, it was cold in the tunnel. Struggling to lighten the mood, Vax petitioned Percy for a bit of powder with which to draw a dick on Grog’s forehead. The gunslinger complied after a little grumbling, and Vax’s artistic endeavour was quite successful. Still, the chill that had settled over the party was not lifted. It hung over them as they pushed their way into Percy’s childhood home, pursued them as they followed Doctor Anna Ripley through the halls of the castle. When Pike’s spiritual body faded it rushed in to fill the hole she left, cold dread filling the space of warmth and radiance.

There was a point, before everything went wrong, that Vax felt it coming. Call it precognition or retrospective, but Vax remembered a moment when a bad feeling had settled upon him so violently that he considered the best way to grab Vex and run. To be fair, he had just inadvertently sent his friends to their acid filled deaths. Even through the beguiling influences of Sylas Briarwood there had been something about the look on Percy’s face as Cassandra had pressed her hand to the glass and told him she was a Briarwood.

Then they were fighting, everything happening so fast, trying desperately to stop a ritual with no time to think. To Vax, it was very much like being on a beach and watching a massive wave on the horizon, knowing with certainty there was nothing he could do to outrun it.

With Vex inches from death, Vax thought of nothing but her. There were no thoughts for Percy, or for Cassandra, or for the promise he had made. Sylas and Delilah were both dead, only the second of the two by Percy’s own hand. Though if he harboured any ill will for the stolen kill he had not vocalized it. Then again, he hadn’t said much of anything as they fled the ziggurat. In the battle Percy had been a focused and efficient killing machine. That in itself was not out of the ordinary, but the black smoke had grown thick around him, his movements almost supernaturally fast at times. It was like he had seen nothing else, not the threat of the ritual, nor Vex’s fall. He had even put a bullet through Cassandra’s shoulder, the younger de Rolo currently lying slung over Grog’s back.

But Vax thought of none of this as he clutched his sister's hand. Her eyes were open, her breathing shallow but regular. She was alive, and he buried his face in her neck, trying desperately not to cry. It did not feel like it was over.

“Percy?” Keyleth asked.

He stood a little distance away from where the rest of them clustered around Vex. The smoke hung just as heavy around him now as it had when he’d taken the shot that had killed Delilah.

“I can’t,” he said.

“What?” Keyleth responded, not yet realizing that the words were not meant for her.

“Please,” he begged, staring into nothing. “I haven’t… It’s you. You’re the one attempting to change the deal. She was never part of this. Take Ripley. Take me.”

“Percy, darling?” Vex called, getting to her feet as she leaned heavily on Vax’s shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“Who are you talking to?” Vax demanded.

“She’s my sister,” Percy whispered, voice heavy with tears. “Yes. Yes, but it’s not her fault. I—I left her. It’s me… I…”

Vox Machina stood tense, afraid to move towards him, afraid to do nothing. When Percy turned back to face them, his eyes were black.

“Let her down,” he told Grog, authoritative and confident. None of the quivering uncertainty remained.

“Sure thing,” Grog said, even the goliath sensing that something was wrong. “But Percy, what are ya’ going to do next?”

Cassandra’s unconscious body was leaned against the wall. He dug the toe of his boot into her ribs until her eyes fluttered open.

“You betrayed all of us,” Percy said, dripping with malice, “mother and father, me and all the others. You’re right, you’re not a de Rolo anymore.”

Then, he shot her through the head. The gun echoed down the corridor, and blood spattered against the stone. Percy let out a choked cry which was cut off abruptly like the rest of it had been stolen from him.

Cassandra de Rolo was dead.

Vex screamed, quickly stifling it with her hand. A single tear ran down Percy’s cheek, unacknowledged. Everything else about him was a mask of indifference. Keyleth lunged forward, grabbing Percy by the front of his jacket and slamming him against a wall.

“Get the hell out of my friend!” she yelled. “Whatever you are, get out! Percy, I know you’re in there. Please. Please come back to us.”

How could he come back, Vax wondered? With his little sister dead at his feet, the last of his family, how could he bring himself to face it? Vax certainly couldn’t have. The black smoke curled around Percy’s head like a crown.

“Keyleth get—” Vax was just a little too slow as he moved to pull the druid out of the way.

A gunshot rang out through the passage, point blank through Keyleth’s stomach. She stumbled backwards, coughing up a little blood. It coloured her lips like makeup. Percy disappeared into the smoke, then suddenly he was thirty feet away. Whatever power this was, it was not Percy’s, and he stood facing them all, nearly unrecognizable. Vex was crying as she notched an arrow.

“Wait…” Grog asked, hand hovering over his weapon uncertainly. “Are we really goin’ a kill him?”

“Just…” Vex choked. “I don’t know, knock him out. We’ll figure something out. We have to.”

She fired without successes, arrow going through the smoke but hitting no flesh. Vax wasn’t sure if it had been on purpose or not. Behind Percy, something loomed. It was as tall as the ceiling, with a curving beak like Percy’s mask, and bright piercing eyes.

“Don’t get in my way,” said Percy, and it sounded like two voices. “I still have work to do. Doctor Ripley still lives, as well as who knows how many other collaborators. This isn’t over for me. Try to stop me and I will kill you.”

After that, everything blurred together. They had already been exhausted, beaten down by their ordeal atop the ziggurat. But Vox Machina could not head Percy’s order. They were not capable of it. Already dangerous, whatever was happening to Percy had made him even more so. And the great shadow beside him screamed, and it echoed in their heads, made them turn on each other.  Everything was smoke, and blood, and the smell of black powder.

Vax found himself back on the ground floor of Castle Whitestone. They’d lost him, slipping away into shadows just as well as Vax himself. Maybe it was for the best. Keyleth was unconscious, Scanlan and Vex not far from it themselves. Still, they searched for him. Why? This castle was a graveyard now, no one left to fill its rooms.

“Percy!” Vax heard Grog’s furious yell from a nearby room. “Show your face!”

Trancelike, Vax wound his way through the halls. It felt like a nightmare, surreal and detached. This couldn’t be happening. Thick wooden doors met his hands, and Vax pushed his way into a beautiful library. Floor to ceiling shelves were lined with books, soft light filtering between thick curtains. For the first time, Vax understood how Percy could have come from this place. There were pieces of him here, as obscured as they were by un-death and suffering.

And there he was, standing in the middle of the room. The shadow creature was nowhere in sight, only the smallest traces of smoke clinging to his collar. Percy was facing away, and Vax tread so softly he was more than halfway to him before Percy turned around. Vax’s call for help caught in his throat.

“You promised,” Percy whispered, angry, and desperate, and sad.

“Percival listen…”

“I’m a monster. My sister is dead. The best you all could have done for me was stop me, but you couldn’t even do that. I trusted you, Vax…”

“Don’t you dare put this on us!” Vax brandished his dagger. “We’ve been trying to help you! Even now.”

“You don’t understand!” Percy yelled, and gods he was terrifying when he was angry. “He—he won’t let me—This has to end.”

Lightning fast, Percy’s pistol was against his own temple. Vax braced, expected to hear the sound and see the spray of grey matter. He felt his heart stop. But then Percy’s arm was slammed down against his side, the smoke pouring out of him, and he was shaking. Whether he was crying, or laughing, or something in between, Vax couldn’t tell.

“You promised!” Percy yelled.

And he had hurt Vex, hadn’t he? And Keyleth. And Scanlan. They couldn’t end this, so Vax would have to.

“I loved you,” Vax said, trying to keep his voice steady. “We’re family, always. Please know that.”  

Both men moved at the same time. Vax heard the explosion of the gun and expected to feel pain, but none came. Twisted and scorched, Percy’s pistol sat uselessly in his hand. His shadow swelled behind him, like a boil about to burst. But Vax was faster. Before Percy’s passenger could reveal itself, Vax drove a dagger into Percy’s neck.

Whether Vax had truly been that fast, or if it had been Percy who had chosen not to move, it was impossible to say. It was the kind of thing one could never know for certain. It was one of the accurate, destructive strikes Vax was known for, and Percy’s knees buckled. The gun fell uselessly from his hand.

“Jenga,” Vax said, his voice hoarse.

Percy slumped forward against him, as they both slid to the ground.

“Jenga!” Vax tried again, louder, though such things made little difference to their earrings. “I have him… I.”

“Thank you,” Percy rasped, barely audible. “My guns… destroy them.”

“Do it yourself!”

But there was no conviction in Vax’s words. It wasn’t over. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Yet it was.

The shadows around Percy’s body thrashed and squirmed for a moment, but then they were still. Percy’s eyes were a familiar cold blue, behind cracked glasses. His breath was shallow, gurgling a little as the blood filled his throat. He lay across Vax’s lap and as his eyes slid closed Vax could have sworn he was smiling.

Finally, the last of the de Rolos went to join his family.

**Author's Note:**

> lol sorry. It's been a while since I watched the Briarwood arc but I've always wanted to write angsty fic about it. It's the kind of thing that never gets old, you know?


End file.
